Headlines

Germany's only remaining major department store chain is set to get new owners after its third spell in bankruptcy protection in four years, and the company aims to keep most of its stores open, its insolvency administrator said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is to be taken over by a consortium of U.S. private equity firm NRDC Equity Partners, which currently has investments in Hudson's Bay of Canada and Saks Fifth Avenue among others, and German businessman Bernd Beetz's BB Kapital SA.

For years, the International Monetary Fund has collected billions of dollars in fees from its biggest borrowers, a practice that penalized those most in need. Now, with its coffers refilling and interest rates running high, the world’s lender of last resort is considering giving them a break, Bloomberg News reported. The IMF released a statement last week saying that “a number” of its board members were open to reviewing policies around surcharges, the fees that it charges nations that borrow more than their allotted share or take longer to repay.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said recent industrial policy initiatives pursued by the United States, Europe and other countries to steer innovation in certain sectors were no panacea to boost economic growth, Reuters reported. The IMF, in a chapter of its forthcoming Fiscal Monitor, said industrial policy could drive innovation if done well, but history was full of cautionary tales of policy mistakes, high fiscal costs and negative spillovers in other countries.

The Swiss government stopped short of offering the country’s banking watchdog the power to fine lenders, despite widespread support for the measure — including from the finance minister, Bloomberg News reported. After the near-collapse of Credit Suisse over a year ago and its takeover by UBS Group AG, Switzerland is grappling with how to handle an outsized financial sector dominated by a behemoth bank that’s more than twice the size of its economy.

The Bank of Japan would consider a policy response if the yen’s weakness causes inflation to rise sharply higher, Gov. Kazuo Ueda said on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. “If there is a risk that a virtuous cycle of wages and prices strengthens more than expected and underlying inflation rises above 2%, we need to consider changing monetary policy,” Ueda said in a parliamentary committee meeting, when asked by an opposition lawmaker whether the bank would act against the yen’s fall. The yen is trading around 151.75 to the dollar on Wednesday, staying near its 34-year low.

Thailand's central bank left its key interest rate unchanged for a third straight meeting on Wednesday, resisting repeated calls by the government to lower borrowing costs to help revive Southeast Asia's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The Bank of Thailand's (BOT) monetary policy committee voted 5-2 to hold the one-day repurchase rate at 2.50%, the highest in more than a decade. It had raised the rate by 200 basis points since August 2022 to curb inflation.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand left its official cash rate steady at a policy meeting on Wednesday, but signaled that the rate will need to remain restrictive for some time yet given that inflation remains high, the Wall Street Journal reported. The OCR was held at 5.5%, which was widely expected by economists. “While some near-term price pressures remain, the Monetary Policy Committee is confident that maintaining the OCR at a restrictive level for a sustained period will return consumer price inflation to within the 1% to 3% target range this calendar year,” the central bank said.

The high concentration in crypto trading on a handful of exchanges, with Binance alone accounting for about half the market, raises concerns about the impact of a failure on the sector, the EU's securities watchdog said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The bloc is rolling out the world's first comprehensive set of rules to regulate trading in cryptoassets such as bitcoin, Ether and Tether, requiring exchanges to be authorised. The European Securities and Markets Authority's detailed analysis of what's being traded and by whom found that so far the euro currency plays only a minor role.

Australia plans to toughen its corporate merger rules amid regulators’ and public concerns that market concentration is restricting competition in key industries and adding to inflation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The reforms will strengthen and simplify Australia’s merger approval system, the federal government said Wednesday. It plans to give the competition watchdog additional powers to scrutinize all mergers above certain value and market-share thresholds.

British Columbia’s credit rating was cut to AA- by S&P Global Ratings with a negative outlook — its third downgrade in three years — after the provincial government decided to ramp up borrowing, Bloomberg News reported.